


Precious Imperfections

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Series: Art Therapy [1]
Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: AU, Art, Art School, F/F, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28003827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Beatrice is an art student struggling to breathe life and soul into her technically perfect work. Ava is an artist's model who's still trying to find herself in more ways than one. They help each other on their journeys through an intense, intimate, sensual connection that neither of them can quite categorize. But do they even want to?
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Series: Art Therapy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077677
Comments: 378
Kudos: 421





	1. GLANCE

**AVA**

“Hey Prof,” Ava calls across the studio as she saunters into the middle of the room, “you mind turning up the heat a little in here?”

“I actually did a moment ago, Ava,” Professor Salvius responds. “It’ll be toasty in here shortly.”

“Cool.”

Ava has done this gig a few times. It isn’t hard. Well, it is if you have body shame, she supposes, but she sometimes suspects she was born without a shame gene.Her freshman year exploits would seem to suggest that.

The middle of the room is carefully lit, and the students are clustered around with their sketchbooks perched at the edges of their work tables, sharpening their pencils and not paying the slightest attention to her as she walks into the center of the space, doffs the cotton robe she’s wearing, and settles on the stool that Professor Salvius has provided her.

The air is still a little cool. Her skin reacts immediately.

She would never want to be a stripper, she thinks, but this? It’s art. For a hundred bucks, she comes in for an hour, and the students draw her in whatever position the professor directs her to take. The students don’t ogle her. They look at her with a strange kind of concentration, as if breaking her down into her constituent parts and divorcing them entirely from their meaning. There’s nothing particularly sexy about it.

Salvius asks her to perch her foot on one of the rungs of the stool and lean forward, resting her elbow on her knee. She takes the postion, and sits.

Canvases in various stages of completion line the outside of the room, and charcoal sketches on large, thin sheets of paper sit tacked up on a large corkboard wall. The room smells of drying paint, a smell that she doesn’t entirely mind. Ava is a college junior with an undeclared major and a head full of ideas that she doesn’t begin to have the talent to draw or paint. At least this way, she thinks, she’s doing something art-adjacent.

She’s never asked to see the drawings when she finished up one of these. Sometimes she’d steal a glance at someone’s sketchbook as she walked past in her robe, heading to the bathroom to get back into her street clothes. They seemed pretty good, at least to her admittedly uncultured eye.

There’s one girl that’s seated not quite in front of her, but within her field of vision. She’s a pretty, girl about the same age as Ava, with large, serious eyes. Ava can’t quite look at her face without turning her head, which she’s not supposed to do. But she’s not looking at her quite the way the others do. She’s not ogling, exactly. And she has the same focus, the same concentration. It’s just missing the feeling of being taken apart, of being dissected into lines and shapes.

After thirty minutes, the sun has shifted slightly in the large windows of the studio. It has indeed warmed up in here, and Ava could use a little water. The professor invites her to take a short break, and then come back for a second pose. This time, the professor wants a power pose: standing, feet apart, hands on hips, shoulders back, chin up. She can’t look directly at the girl.

So while she stands there, she sings through most of Taylor Swift’s “1989” in her head. There are those three or four songs she can never remember. The professor interrupts her just as she’s getting started with “Clean”.

_The drought was the very worst (Oh-oh, oh-oh)_

_When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst_

_It was months and months of back and forth (Oh-oh, oh-oh)_

_You're still all over me_

_Like a wine-stained dress I can't wear anymore_ –

“All right everyone, we’re going to call it for today. If you want to continue to touch up your work, you have until the end of today to turn it in, but please no later than that. Ava, thank you as always.”

Ava crouches down, picks up the robe, and slides it on. As she walks off toward the back of the room where her backpack sits, the girl approaches her.

“Pardon me,” she says in a soft English accent.

Ava looks at her.

“Professor Salvius asked me to give this to you.”

Ava takes the envelope in the girl’s hand and grins at her. “Thanks. This is fun and all, but I do like to get paid.”

Faint amusement plays around the girl’s mouth. “Of course. Thank you. I’m sure it can be quite hard to stay still for that long.”

Ava shrugs. “Beats being a crash test dummy.”

They smile at each other for a moment until it becomes slightly awkward.

“Well, I suppose you’d like to go get dressed,” the girl says.

Before Ava can say some other smartass comment, she’s already gone back to her workspace. Ava is curious to know what her work looks like. She wonders if the girl sees her differently that the other artists because she was looking at her differently.

**BEATRICE**

The other students have left. Professor Salvius stands with Beatrice, looking at her work from today. Beatrice doesn’t understand how the professor manages to look so immaculate all day while Beatrice’s own hands are smudged with pencil and charcoal.

“It’s good,” the professor says.

But Beatrice frowns. “That sounds like damning with faint praise.”

Salvius smirks. “Beatrice, you know that you’re better than half these idiots, yes?”

“And yet.” Beatrice looks at her archly.

Beatrice is a hard worker. It’s amazing that she’s managed to find friends at all with the degree to which she relentlessly applies herself to her work. But Salvius wants more from her. “And yet, you continue to hold back and rely solely on technique. You know what Pablo Casals said.”

“The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all? Yes I’ve read your book, Professor.”

Salvius doesn’t mind Beatrice challenging her and even is occasionally amused by the low-wattage sass that seems to slip from her mouth more often these days. “Then perhaps apply some of what’s in it.”

The professor scrutinizes the two sketches while Beatrice tamps down a response. After a moment, she says, “This almost has a pulse, Beatrice.”

“I’m almost grateful for your feedback.”

“Whatever it was that you did differently today, do more of it.”

“I don’t know what I did differently.” This is true. The model was unusually beautiful, but Beatrice can’t put her finger on how or why that would have changed anything she did. “What’s different about it?”

Salvius crosses her arms. “You were looking at the subject, I think, not the individual shapes and forms and lines. There’s more of her energy here, and less of the specific moles and freckles on her elbow.”

“I missed moles and freckles on her elbow?” Beatrice deadpans.

Salvius has tired of this banter. “Turn this in to me. Now, please.”

“But I wanted to–”

“No. Do not spend all night massaging it. You’ll ruin the miniscule miracle that you’ve managed to create here. Go have pizza with friends, if you do that sort of thing.”

Beatrice ignores the mild jab. She tries not to betray how uncomfortable she is with turning the drawings in as they are. “Grade them now,” she demands.

“Why? So you can take them home and continue to work on them even thoughI’ve told you not to?”

“No. I won’t work on them. I promise I’ll just look at them. I want to figure out what I’ve done right.”

Salvius sighs. “I’d be within my rights to give you a B just for irritating me so.”

“You won’t do that.”

“Of course not.” She slides the papers back toward Beatrice. “Beatrice, you’re very, very good. I think that you could be truly brilliant. If I push you, it’s because I believe there’s more in you.”

“There’s always more,” Beatrice responds. “So?”

“A minus. Now get out of my studio and for god’s sake, do something fun tonight.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Beatrice says, giving the professor the most “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” smile she can muster. She slides the sketches into her black zip portfolio.

She does not go out with friends. She sits at home, with a glass of wine, staring at her sketches, chasing the source of the breath and pulse that she has just barely managed to imbue into these beautiful forms. She will find it, she thinks. She will.


	2. CONCEPT

**AVA**

Ava’s roommate is burning something in the kitchen. This happens a lot. He’s not great in the kitchen. She barely even notices it as she cracks her bedroom window open and goes back to trying to focus on her Comp Lit homework. She’s having trouble. She doesn’t care about the book they’re reading. She’s tired of reading the words of dead white men. Or men in general. She’s attending the school on the other side of town from the art school, which she secretly thinks she should have gone to instead, except… no talent.

She thinks again about the girl in the art class today. She’s still wondering what her drawings look like. She’s not sure why. The girl had this gentle, thoughtful energy about her, something Ava liked. She rarely runs into that in other people. She hardly ever runs into it in herself. She thinks and thinks constantly, her mind races through ideas, places, faces, but there’s nothing gentle about it. It’s aggressive sometimes. Riotous.

Her phone goes off. It’s a text from her ex-boyfriend J.C.

_How was your naked thing?_

_LOL it was fine._

_Did the stuff work?_

_Yeah it worked great. Thx._

J.C. sells weed. He’d given her some to help her chill out and not fidget for the hour that she had to stand in the middle of Professor Salvius’s studio. They had been together off and on for most of freshman year. Ava had ended it, mostly out of boredom. He’s a good guy, and handsome, but there isn’t much to him. They remain friends who have uncomplicated booty calls a couple of times a year.

_I got some new stuff. Blueberry. Wanna try it?_

_Blueberry? That sounds weird._

_No it’s great._

Is tonight going to be one of those uncomplicated booty calls? Sometimes, “I got some new stuff” is his come-on for that. Of course, sometimes, he just has some new stuff and wants to get high with her and watch Teen Titans on the couch.

_You mean like now?_

_Yeah unless you’re busy._

She has work to do but she doesn’t seem to be feeling productive anyway.

_Yeah fine but I should probably come there bc Diego burned his spaghetti again or whatever_

_LOL fine_.

What is she doing with her life? She wonders this as she walks to his apartment a few blocks from campus. He lives alone in a small studio that isn’t exactly comfortable but at the moment doesn’t smell like fire. How in the hell is she going to cobble the mishmash of classes she’s taken over the last two and a half years into a major? What does she want to be? Sometimes growing up in the foster system had offered freedom, because there wasn’t a single focal point, a single parental authority telling you what to do. But sometimes it left Ava unfocused, a bit hazy, because she didn’t have an anchor.

 _What do I want?_ The night offers no answers. She goes to J.C.’s, smokes his weed, has reasonably good sex in his slightly too small bed, during most of which she is elsewhere. Spain. Egypt. Everest. Anywhere.

The next night is Friday. She finds herself at the pizza joint on the north side of campus. It rests in between her school and Pratchett, the art school where she models sometimes. Her plan is to get a slice and then meet up with some kids from Western Civ class to see a movie. She stands in the chaotic line that dribbles out the door and onto the sidewalk.

As she edges inside, she sees a group sitting at one of the tables. Four girls, and three are unfamiliar, but one of them, she knows. The girl from the art class. Ava spends the next several minutes in line debating whether to go say hello. Normally, Ava isn’t shy. She doesn’t know why she hesitates. After she orders her slice, she decides to go over. If it’s a disaster, she can just walk away.

“Hey,” she says cheerfully, munching on her slice as she approaches the table.

The girl looks up, surprised to see her. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out for a moment.

“From the art class,” Ava says, continuing to smile at her.

The other three girls are looking curiously at her.

“Yes, of course,” the girl says.

Another awkward pause follows. This was definitely a dumb idea. “Anyway, I just saw you so I figured I’d say hi.”

“Hi.”

One of the other girls decides to rescue her. “Hi,” she says. She has a baby face and a friendly smile, and a big mop of curly blue hair. “I’m Camila. She’s Mary, she’s Lilith.” She points at the girl Ava had come over to talk to. “And she’s rude.”

“Beatrice,” the girl finally jumps in. “I’m sorry, I don’t actually remember your name.”

“Ava.” She looks around. She notice that the two introduced as Mary and Lilith have their fingers casually laced together on the tabletop. She barely manages to keep “ _Oh cool, lesbians”_ from popping out of her mouth. She’s been working hard to filter herself more lately. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to it. I’ve got a movie to make. See ya, Beatrice.”

**BEATRICE**

“I’ve never seen you that useless,” Mary comments.

Beatrice doesn’t answer her.

Camila gasps. “You’re blushing.”

“I don’t blush.”

“You do,” Lilith sniffs, “and you are.”

“Why were you like a deer in headlights?” Mary wants to know.

Beatrice can’t quite explain. She didn’t have the slightest trouble talking to her when they were in the class and Ava was naked, or close to it. But the studio is a bubble. Different rules apply. Here in the real world, it’s something different. “I don’t know how to talk to her with her clothes on.”

Lilith snorts. Mary cackles. “You’ve seen her naked and you don’t even know her name? Damn, Beatrice. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I don’t. She modeled for my drawing class.”

“She’s cute,” Camila says conspiratorially.

Beatrice can’t deal with all the questions. She pulls out her phone, desperate to change the subject. “Can we just take this bloody selfie?”

Professor Salvius had emailed Beatrice this morning, assigning her to go out with friends tonight. _Pics or it didn’t happen, and yes you will be graded,_ she’d added. So they all crowd into the frame.

Beatrice snaps a couple of shots and sends them to Salvius. _Happy now?_

“You should ask her out,” Camila urges.

“I thought we were done discussing this,” Beatrice huffs.

“Well, why not?”

“It would be weird. It would be like…” She struggles for a moment. “Like dating a co-worker… but weirder than that.”

“Yeah,” Mary comments, “a co-worker who you’ve seen naked.”

That’s not it either. But Beatrice just agrees with her because she wants the conversation to end.

Her friends know she’s not been with anyone in a little while. It’s hard for her to meet someone because she doesn’t telegraph her sexuality: she’s not butch like Mary, or eccentric and cute like Camila, or given to the starched “preppy lesbian” uniform of khakis, button down shirts and large chunky watches that Lilith favors. If you walked into a crowded room of strangers and someone asked you to pick out the lesbian, she’d probably not be the first or even second girl you’d pick out.

She asks herself why she got so stupid and silent when Ava had approached them.Was it the warmth of her grin? Her dancing eyes? Her presence at all? As a subject, Ava had brought something out of her. Outside of that environment, Beatrice suddenly finds herself contending with that without the comfortable barrier of the sketchbook.

No, she can’t date Ava. For all she knows, Ava isn’t even interested in women. But perhaps she can work with her again.

The conversation has moved on to which of their professors are suspected to be queer, and Beatrice takes out her phone again and shoots Salvius another email:

_Professor,_

_I think I’d like to get in touch with the model we worked with yesterday. Might I get her contact information?_

_Regards,_

_Beatrice_


	3. SHADOW

Ava is in therapy when she gets the text:

_Hi Ava. This is Beatrice from Prof. Salvius’s art class. I hope it’s all right that she gave me your number. I wondered if you were available for any additional work._

It’s been three days since she ran into Beatrice at the pizza place.

“Put your phone down,” her therapist says.

“Sorry, Vince, it’s work.” He doesn’t need to know that she doesn’t mean her job in the campus bursar’s office.

_Yes, what is it?_

“The bursar’s office is bothering you in therapy?” he inquires skeptically.

“No.” She puts her phone down. “Anyway, I’m wondering if I should just take a semester off and travel or something.” She fidgets in the beanbag chair, fiddles with the fringe on the edge of his IKEA rug.

“The problem of not knowing what you want to do is going to follow you,” he warns.

Ava groans at the ceiling. “Yeah, but at least I’ll be not knowing in a place with some different scenery.”

Her phone buzzes again. She turns it over.

_I need more practice. I’d be glad to pay you whatever the school gives you._

“You don’t look like you’re talking to your job.”

“What do I look like?”

“Like you’re talking to a guy you met the other night that you were hoping would call.”

Snorting, Ava picks up her phone and taps out the reply:

_Like just you? Nobody else?_

_Yes. If you’re comfortable with that._

She decides to explain. “You know how I do some of that modeling for art classes once in a while?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this girl from the last class I did wants to hire me to sit for her.”

“Privately?”

“Sounds like it.”

“Are you interested in doing that?”

“I dunno. Maybe? Probably? It’s easy work.”

_Where would we do it?_

_At my place. Unless you’d prefer someplace else._

_No that’s fine. As long as you’re not a weirdo. :)_

Vince looks like he knows something he’s not telling. He scratches his beard and looks at the wall clock. “Well, we only have five minutes left and it seems like you’re engaged in this other conversation now. Will I see you in two weeks?”

“Uh-huh.” She can’t afford to go every week. Ava gets up, gives him a check, and leaves.

The next reply comes from Beatrice as Ava is sitting on the bus, wedged into a seat next to a pregnant woman with a child on her lap.

_No I assure you I’m quite dull._

Ava can’t help but chuckle at this.

_So you’re dull and I’m a literal statue. This should be a riot. The neighbors will be banging on the wall telling us to keep it down._

A few stops pass. The bus pulls up at Forman Square and does the kneeling thing to let a guy in a wheelchair off. Ava starts to wonder if her joke has offended Beatrice somehow.

Then the response comes:

_I’ll have Jeeves decorate for a kegger. What times are good for you?_

_I have classes and work during the days but Friday evening is good. Actually I can do tomorrow evening too, but I know that’s kind of short notice._

She offers not expecting Beatrice to accept it.

_Tomorrow’s fine actually.I have a thing on Fridays. 7?_

_Sure._

Ava ponders as she watches out the window, the townies in their flannels and khaki pants, the parents loading groceries into their cars, the bankers in shirtsleeves leaving work. None of this seems as if it’s for her.

Beatrice seemed like a gentle soul on their first two admittedly brief encounters, but in these texts, Ava sees a dry wit. She’s curious. She can’t help it. She’s always been that way. Always wanted to know more. Not always with a particular focused goal in mind, hence her current difficulties. But now she has something to look forward to. She’s percolating for tomorrow.

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice’s nerves are jangling when she opens the door at five past seven the following night and finds Ava, backpack over her shoulder, looking windblown but in a good mood. She doesn’t know why she’s nervous. Despite Camila’s insistence that she try to date Ava, this is really only happening because of the spark that her drawings had when Ava was her subject. She wants to re-create it, if she can.

That in itself, she supposes, is daunting enough.

She steps aside. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m glad we could find a time.”

Beatrice gestures down the short hallway. “Bathroom’s over there if you want to get changed.”

“Cool.” She disappears for a few minutes. Beatrice has already arranged the lighting in the living room so that the couch is evenly lit for Ava to stretch out on. She doesn’t know what will come of this. She puts on some unobtrusive piano music.

Ava comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later in her cotton robe, looking around at all the paintings on the walls. “This all your stuff?”

“Most of it.”

Most of it is representational, painfully detailed, perfectly lit. Some abstract pieces hang on the far side of the living room. She’s never been happy with them but she keeps them nevertheless.

“You live alone?”

“Yes.”

Beatrice’s parents subsidize her rent because they’d prefer she didn’t live with a roommate. It doesn’t occur to Beatrice to share this as an element of idle conversation. They stand there in an awkward silence for a moment, then Beatrice gestures to the couch. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Ava pauses and looks at the couch. “Okay, so… like, lay down, or…?”

Beatrice thinks for a moment. “Back against the armrest. Reclined but not lying all the way down. Arm draped over the side. Other arm however you want it.”

“Head?”

“Head back. Put a throw pillow under it if you like.”

Ava takes a throw pillow and sets it atop the arm rest. “No power poses, huh?”

“Not today. Professor Salvius finds my work too stiff, so I’m going to attempt to capture relaxation.”

Ava seems amused by this. She slips the robe off and begins to settle herself into the couch. Beatrice turns around and sets herself up with her sketchbook on the other side of the coffee table.

“Oh, by the way,” Ava says as she arranges herself to her own satisfaction, “I hope you don’t mind, I’m a little baked. It’s just easier for me to stay still that way.”

“That’s fine. Whatever your methods are, you’re very good.”

Ava laughs softly at this, but doesn’t say anything.

Beatrice’s mind always sees through two lenses at once. She looks at things for form and structure, and in this, she is remarkably exact. But she also sees through a lens that focuses on beauty, and this is the lens that she needs to look through as she begins to sketch Ava in a pose of relaxation on her couch.

 _Trust your technique enough to forget it,_ had been Salvius’s advice. This is far too difficult, but perhaps she can subsume it.

Her mind is already trying to break Ava down into forms: parallels and cylinders, curves and ellipses, seeing the skeleton beneath the skin, marking angles. This is automatic. She cannot help it. But she allows herself to take a kind of pleasure in the symmetry of her shape, how languid the curve of her shoulder is as her arm drapes down to the floor. The precise depth in the arch of her back.

Ava is beautiful. Beatrice isn’t blind. She knows this. It’s rare that she allows herself to take pleasure in that when she works. But today, she does. Just a bit. Just enough that it will breathe life onto the page, she hopes.

Her pencil scratches across the page, as she wills herself to see and then ignore the geometry of Ava’s body, as she pulls shadow from the pencil and reveals the light.

“How’s it going?” Ava asks after a while of silence.

“I won’t know until it’s done.”

She continues to work, massaging the slope of Ava’s thigh with a softer, darker pencil. She wants to transmit depth.

“How do you know when it’s done?”

“That is a question that confounds every artist,” Beatrice answers, remaining businesslike. She’s too close the drawing to know whether she’s achieving what she wants.

After thirty minutes has passed, she sets down her pencil. She gives Ava a bottle of water and invites her to put on her robe and get up to stretch her legs. Ava ambles over to the coffee table and looks down at the sketchbook. She seems startled.

“Do you hate it?” Beatrice asks, attempting a joking tone.

Ava shakes her head. “Will you continue working on it after I’m gone?”

“Most likely.”

“Don’t.” Ava says this so quickly it almost sounds desperate. “I mean,you’re the artist, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, it’s just… it’s really good.”

Beatrice, having had the chance to step away, now looks at the page with fresh eyes. It’s a drawing of a beautiful woman, relaxed, sensual in a way that her other work hasn’t managed to be. She suddenly feels nearly as startled as Ava looked a moment ago.

Ava coughs awkwardly. “Well, you have another half hour if you want to do one more.”

“I may as well.”

“Why don’t we do one with me facing you?”

Beatrice’s heart stops. Her voice catches in her throat before she manages to say, “Let’s do it.”


	4. LIGHT

**AVA**

Ava feels as though the wind has been knocked out of her when she sees Beatrice’s first drawing. Granted, she rarely gets a good look at the students’ work when she models, so she has limited basis for comparison. But Ava had already absorbed from looking at Beatrice’s other work hanging on the walls that she’s special. It’s hard to explain why having that talented pointed at her is shaking her up so much. It feels like she’s participating in something that might matter someday.

 _You’re going to really be someone,_ she wants to say. But she’s been working on not saying every stupid thing that pops out into her head.

She sits on the couch, facing Beatrice, hands clasped behind her head. She wants to see Beatrice work. She wants to see what it is in her gaze that produces art like hers. Ava is curious. She wants to know more about this strange, quiet girl.

“You needn’t put your arms like that,” Beatrice says. “They’re going to fall asleep.”

“Well, I just want you to get your money’s worth.”

“I didn’t realize my money bought me permission to torture you.”

They exchange a little smile.

“You can stretch them out on either side of you, resting on the backrest. That’ll do.”

Open posture, she thinks. She wants to see how Beatrice depicts that. She wants to know whether Beatrice feels the energy that flows out of her when she sits this way.

The music is pleasant, and Ava is relaxing into the couch again. She sits for a few minutes listening with eyes closed, enjoying the sounds of Beatrice’s pencil scratching over the paper. But she can only resist for so long. She opens her eyes and looks at Beatrice working.

The focus in her eyes is much more intense than Ava had noticed in the art studio, probably because she’s looking at Beatrice dead on. Beatrice’s dark eyes shine a little as they settle on a part of her (which part, Ava can’t tell), linger there while the pencil scratches away, then dart over her before settling on another part. Sometimes her eyes are cast down at the page for moments at a time, and Ava wonders what goes through her mind as she works.

But that look. That look, Ava can’t decipher it. It’s not the screwed-up face of concentration, the worrying over an angle or a proportion or whatever it is that art students sweat about when they draw a nude. Neither is it ogling. Ava’s not dumb. She’s been ogled by women before. She knows what that looks like. This is not that either. It simply feels like Beatrice is taking her in, committing her body to memory, burning Ava into her brain a bit at a time.

Ava doesn’t hate that look. Not even a little.

Beatrice only makes eye contact with her twice while she’s working. Both times, it’s confident in a way that it wasn’t those other times. Ava gets the distinct sense that there are universes in that girl, passions that Ava doesn’t even have names for.

When Beatrice lays down her pencil, Ava is almost sorry to get up and put her robe back on. She ambles over to the table and looks at the drawing.

It’s a self that she both recognizes and doesn’t. It looks like her, at least to the extent that she’s scrutinized her naked self in front of a mirror. But she’s blindsided by the vulnerability that stares back at her. It’s a self she suspected might exist, but not ever looked very hard at. It’s communicated in the posture, the openness of her chest, a softness in the face. She pulls her robe tighter around herself. “That’s amazing,” she whispers.

Beatrice smiles modestly and lowers her eyes. “Thank you.”

After another oddly awkward moment (why? Why should it be awkward?), Ava begins to say, “Well, I’d better go get dressed.”

At the same moment, Beatrice says, “I’d better go get your check.”

They laugh a little, and each walk in opposite directions.

**BEATRICE**

Ava leaves, and Beatrice opens a bottle of wine and sits on the couch with her evening’s work. Bloodless? Not these.

A part of her wants to show them to Salvius. She wants to know if Salvius will see in them what Beatrice sees now; but a larger part of her wants to keep them to herself. This larger part of her is greedy, maybe, but also intensely private and doesn’t want to share with anyone else what has crept into her art.

How could it not? Ava kept her eyes closed for much of the time, but she also spent a great deal of looking directly at Beatrice. Not staring, exactly, but perhaps searching? The few times they made eye contact Beatrice had to look away because she worried that she would be too obvious in her attraction and make Ava feel awkward. Ava’s gaze has a kind of vulnerability, or at least it did in that second part of the session.

It did not escape her notice that Ava had seemed taken aback by the drawings, but Beatrice couldn’t bring herself to ask why. The possibility lingers that her attraction to the girl has betrayed itself in these drawings. She worries that she exposed herself to Ava in a way that she perhaps should not have, and made her uncomfortable.

She badly wants another session with Ava as soon as possible. She worries that it might be a bad idea. There had been a palpable weirdness in the air as she was leaving.

Beatrice’s phone buzzes. She looks at it. It’s her mother. She doesn’t think she’ll answer it. Her parents, wealthy and influential and conservative, have taken a don’t ask don’t tell approach to her coming out, and it’s not been discussed since she told them she was gay before leaving for college. She’s bubbling with too many feelings at the moment to deal with the emotional labor of talking to her mother.

A moment later it buzzes again. Beatrice sighs with disgust, wondering what could be so urgent that her mother is buzzing her again. But she picks it up and sees it’s a text from Ava.

_Hey I just wanted to tell you again those drawings are really great. You probably know how talented you are but you really made me look good._

Beatrice doesn’t know what to make of this message. Surely Ava knows how attractive she is. _You’re an excellent model, that’s all. My hand only reproduces what my eye sees._

After she sends this last text, she frowns at it. She intends it to be self-deprecating but is fairly sure it reads as false profundity. The intervening pause before Ava’s response feels quite long, but at last it comes:

_Well, maybe your eye is really what’s great. More than your hand, I mean._

And then a moment later:

_Wait. That sounded weird. Never mind. I just mean_

Beatrice laughs softly and as the little dots fade in and out, indicating that Ava is typing another sentence, Beatrice decides to rescue her:

_I’m currently no longer accepting compliments this evening on either of those items._

_LOL OK.Anyway, if you want me to do this again, let me know._

Beatrice drinks a few generous sips of wine. Soon enough she’s drained half the glass and the warmth comes to her fingers, her lips, and underneath her collar.She idly speculates on what Ava might look like with wine-stained lips. She is mixing her work and her … well, whatever this is. Her personal attractions. She’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to but Ava is a puzzle. Her attraction to Ava is fueling something in her work that is surely the right direction. And while her phrasing may have been awkward, Beatrice finds Ava’s comment that her eye might be more important than her hand to be somewhat perceptive.

She drains the rest of her glass and stares at the phone where it sits. God, she wants to look at her again. God, this is going to become an expensive habit if she isn’t careful.

She isn’t feeling careful.

She texts back:

_How’s Friday?_


	5. DEPTH

**AVA**

Ava keeps thinking of those drawings all week long. She’s annoyed with herself for not expressing it well, but Beatrice’s drawings struck her so much because they show a complexity.People mistake Ava’s good nature and fidgety energy for being simple. So much so that Ava often thinks of herself that way. Beatrice saw something else, something more. The drawings remind Ava that she is more than what people expect of her.

“You’re going again? So soon?”

Ava is sitting across from J.C. at the Starbucks near his place, eating one of those spinach feta wraps. “Yeah. I guess she wants the practice.”

He looks skeptical. “Maybe she’s gay and trying to seduce you.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I swear to god, dudes think everything is about sex.”

“Come on, be fair. You’re sitting there naked.”

“I do that all the time! I told you, it’s not sexual at all.”

“Yeah, but it’s always classrooms full of people. You’re doing this alone at her house. You don’t think that’s weird?”

“Maybe, but so what? I make $7 an hour at the bursar’s office, it’s not like I couldn’t use the money, and I’m not doing anything that I feel uncomfortable with.”

J.C. grins now. “Look, I’m not judging, Ava.” He’s teasing her in that dumb, dorky way that reminds her of his limitations and why she broke up with him. “If you want to experiment and broaden your horizons with some rich art student, go for it. Is she hot?”

Ava wants to say yes, but also doesn’t. She doesn’t have perspective on whether women are hot; she doesn’t usually think of them in those terms. “Hot” also feels juvenile to describe Beatrice, with her quiet calm, her quick wit, her hidden depths. She doesn’t want to tell him that Beatrice is “hot,” because for some reason, she doesn’t want to even share the idea of her with him. “I don’t know,” she answers irritably. “Girls aren’t usually my thing.”

Friday can’t come fast enough.

Ava doesn’t know why she’s filled with anxious excitement as she rings Beatrice’s buzzer on Friday. She’s smoked some of J.C’s stupid but annoyingly tasty blueberry sativa. She can’t imagine how jittery she’d be right now if she hadn’t.

 _What is up with you?_ she reprimands herself.

Beatrice opens the door. Her hair is tied back, her shirt is a little rumpled, and the apartment vaguely smells of Italian food. “Silly me, hoping you might not be on time. Come in, I’m just finishing dinner.”

Ava follows her inside and they sit at the small kitchen table as Beatrice finishes a few bites of what looks like linguine with red clam sauce. “Did you make that yourself?”

“Such as it is,” Beatrice says dismissively.

“It smells good.”

Beatrice has that same modest little smile. “Thank you. And you…” She wrinkles her nose a bit. “Do you smell like blueberries?”

Ava laughs. “Yeah. I smoked some blueberry weed.”

“Does it taste good?”

“Actually, it does. I wanted to hate it because it’s stupid. Like how beer isn’t supposed to taste like fruit? But it’s actually really good. Do you smoke?”

“I don’t. But if I were ever to be persuaded, I suppose it might be for blueberry flavored cannabis.”

Ava immediately wonders what Beatrice would be like after half a joint of that stuff. “I’m gonna go change,” she says, and runs off to the bathroom.

When she emerges in her cotton robe, Beatrice has washed her dish and is setting out her pencils in the living room. “So,” Ava says, sauntering over to her, “how do you want me?”

Beatrice looks past Ava at the couch, blinks a couple of times and says, “Let’s try on your side, facing me, arm tucked under your head.”

 _Did I just flirt with her?_ This thought is too much for Ava to consider, so she nods once, slips the robe off, and lies down on the couch. Once she’s horizontal, she asks Beatrice if it’s right.

“Put your other hand here.” Beatrice points to a spot on the couch near Ava’s stomach. “Extend your leg a little.”

Ava cooperates. She wants to be part of Beatrice’s vision.

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice takes a few moments more to adjust Ava’s pose with verbal cues. She will not touch her.

This pose is still relaxed, but it edges ever so slightly toward the erotic. More than the previous two, at least. If Beatrice came home to find her hypothetical girlfriend laying in bed this way, she wouldn’t be clothed very much longer herself.

She has adjusted the lighting this time for more dramatic shadows. The darks show in greater contrast against the white. Deep shadows hug the curve of Ava’s hip, cup her cheekbones, the underside of her breasts. She’s challenging herself to make the art speak.

Beatrice wonders as she sketches Ava whether she’s cheating by choosing such a beautiful subject. Ava’s whole being is a marvel of symmetry, a collection of golden ratios. Having drawn her a few times now, Beatrice finds that her mind is doing less math as she works, because she’s coming to know Ava’s body enough to not need it. This is, perhaps, what Salvius means when she talks about abandoning technique. She allows herself some joy at the creation of these forms.

“How did you know that you wanted to be an artist?” Ava asks her out of the blue.

Beatrice looks up, surprised at the question, and finds herself caught in Ava’s curious, vulnerable gaze. “I’ve never wanted to be anything else. I’m lucky enough to have parents who will pay for the schooling.” She goes back to her work, but as she draws, she asks, “And what about you? Are you doing what you want to be doing?”

The silence is filled with the scratching of her pencil as she applies more shadow to the place where one thigh overlaps the other.

Finally, Ava answers quietly. “I don’t know what I want to do. I want to do everything. All of it. All the time. All at once. Do everything, go everywhere, see everything. I mean, right this second, right this moment? Yeah. I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing. But big picture? It’s a mess.”

Beatrice looks up at her. Why is Ava’s honesty so disarming? Right this second, right this moment, Ava says, she’s doing exactly what she wants to be doing. Meaning this? “You _can_ do all the things,” Beatrice says, going back to making light strokes down one of Ava’s thigh muscles. “You just have to pick one at a time.”

“Thanks, Sensei,” Ava answers, and her tone is unmistakable in its playful mischief.

As if she hadn’t thought of that. Beatrice reprimands herself. “Sorry. I don’t mean to talk to you like an idiot. I take you very seriously, I promise.”

“I know you do.”

There’s something in her tone that makes Beatrice look at her again. There’s that vulnerability, that openness. Ava looking at her as if Beatrice is meeting some deep, aching need simply by treating her as a whole, complex, intelligent person.

When they finish for the evening, Ava wants to see the drawings again. She seems more emotional than Beatrice even knows what to do with. “You have a gift. You’re…” She trails off. “I’m sorry. This needs better words than I can come up with right now.” She’s flushed and her eyes are a little glassy.

On impulse, Beatrice takes the second drawing of the night and hands it to her. She wants to keep the first one for herself. It captures something that Beatrice wants to hold tightly and worry her fingers over.

“What?” Ava stares at her blankly.

“Take that one.” She stops, amends herself. “If you want it, that is.”

“Yeah, of course I do! I just… this is your work. You’re already paying me. I mean, don’t you need all these?”

“I’ll live without it. You just seem … it seems to have affected you. I thought you might like to have it. But don’t feel pressured that you have to take it.”

“No no, not at all. Not at all pressured. I’d love to have it. I just…”

“You’ve more than earned it,” Beatrice says firmly. She retrieves her checkbook and writes Ava a check. “Thanks again.”

Ava thanks her profusely and hurries out.

Beatrice is a tangle of longings, lusts, guilts, and hesitations. But they are infusing her work with the passion that Salvius has been scolding her for lacking.Beatrice dares not assume, but something is clicking between them. Perhaps that’s just the way of things between an artist and muse. She doesn’t know. She’s never had one.


	6. ANGLE

**AVA**

Ava is dimly aware of Diego trying to sweet-talk his girlfriend into something on the phone in the living room. She’s stretched out on her bed, delicately holding the drawing Beatrice gave her, trying to understand what she’s feeling. Beatrice isn’t any old art student. Ava doesn’t have deep experience with art but she’s not dumb. She knows something special when she sees it. And Beatrice is special. She’s doing exactly what she’s meant to be doing.

This staggers Ava on a number of levels, not the least of which being the sheer self-actualization of it: having a single ambition that gives your life meaning and living in a way that everything is pointed towards it. She wonders what that’s like.

The drawing is a simple pose; she’s standing and her arms are clasped across her body, just beneath her breasts. Her head is down and tilted to one side. She gets the same feeling from it that she did from looking at the other drawings, that feeling of recognizing herself and yet not, seeing a softness, a quietude that she doesn’t often think of herself as possessing. She can’t name what it makes her feel, but it gives her a deep-down shiver, a thrill up the back of her neck.

It’s an excitement that feels suspiciously like being aroused.

She doesn’t know why it should affect her this way. Is she attracted to Beatrice? It feels less focused, less specific than that somehow. She tries the thought experiment of imagining kissing her; her mind quickly goes from there to crying somewhere because sex ruined everything, without any of the supposedly fun stuff in between. Her mind goes from war zones in Africa to remote beaches in the Pacific to her hometown, the place she doesn’t want to go because it doesn’t feel any more like home than anywhere else.

There’s too much noise in her head. She can’t slow her thoughts down enough to pick them apart. She doesn’t know what she wants from Beatrice, but she’s somehow turned on by the delicate thing that they’re doing, the things that Beatrice is capturing on the page.

She surrenders, and grabs her phone. She sends a text:

_Thank you again for this drawing. I really appreciate it._

If she were texting JC, the text would probably just say _I’m horny, come over._ But she doesn’t think she actually wants that. She’s unclear whether what she’s feeling is actually a desire for sex at all, or something else.

Beatrice responds:

_Of course. I’m enjoying working with you._

_Me too._

_I’d like to have you come again, whenever you can manage it._

Ava wonders at this. She has the vibe that Beatrice comes from money, but still. This has to be getting expensive for her.But Ava wants to keep doing this. She’s getting something from it that is different from the normal studio gigs. 

She wants to say “I’ll come tomorrow,” but that feels too eager.

_Well, Tuesday evenings are usually good for me._

_Sounds good._

Ava scrambles for a way to keep the conversation going. She needs to crack the code of what’s happening here.

_Can I ask you something?_

_Of course._

_Why me?_

_I don’t understand your question._

_I mean Salvius brings in different models in all the time. Why did you pick me? Why do you *keep* picking me?_

The pause, filled only with the little bouncing dots that indicate Beatrice is typing, feels eternal.

_Because of the way I responded to you. When you came and sat for our class that time, it happened to produce something that I had been after in my work. So I’m attempting re-create those conditions in order to understand, refine and perfect it._

Beatrice’s response raises more questions than it answers. “Because of the way I responded to you” is incredibly vague. Feeling impetuous all of a sudden, Ava types:

_That’s an awful lot of words for ‘nice boobs’ jk_

She’s teasing, but not really. She grows anxious as the delay in Beatrice’s response draws on for a few minutes.

Then her phone buzzes again:

_Are they? I hadn’t noticed_

Nothing else for a moment. Then:

_In all seriousness, Prof. Salvius has called my work bloodless, constipated, stiff, and she’s been trying to push me to allow it to breathe and feel more alive. Something about your energy has been helping me to break through that. You’re very kinetic. I don’t know if there’s a better explanation._

Ava decides to be satisfied with that for now.

_Okay. Thank you for trying. I was just curious._

She smokes a little more, does some reading for Comp Lit. Then she shuts the light, slides her hand into her underwear and rocks herself to sleep that way, definitely not thinking about Beatrice.

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice’s assigned work is not yet affected by the work that she’s doing privately with Ava. But that work has almost become more important.

Professor Salvius notices that she’s distracted and questions her about it after class.

“Sorry, Professor. I’ve been doing some independent work and I’m struggling to translate it to the in-class portion just yet.”

“Independent work?”

“Yes. With Ava.”

Salvius looks intrigued. “So that’s why you wanted her contact information. How’s that been going?”

“Rather well, actually.”

“I’d like to see some of it, if you care to share.”

Beatrice shifts uncomfortably. “Perhaps.”

Salvius’s look is entirely too knowing. “She is a very pretty girl.”

“She is, but it’s something else. It’s more ineffable than that.”

In fact, her professor is looking downright amused. “Well, lust has been a powerful motivator in quite a lot of really great art.”

Beatrice’s cheeks grow warm. She’s never specifically discussed her orientation with Salvius and is a bit put out that she’s assumed correctly. Perversely, she’s always prided herself on not being readily identifiable. “I just don’t know how to channel what I’ve tapped into.”

Salvius pats her shoulder. “Well, keep at it. The more you acquaint yourself with your own passions, the easier it will be to allow that to surface when there isn’t some beautiful naked girl in front of you.”

Tuesday evening comes. Beatrice has been able to think of little else. Forcing herself to admit that she wants Ava has put her in an agitated state of mind. But it has actually done something she didn’t think possible, which is that it has allowed her to forget about her technique. She has no choice but to trust that it’s there because her focus split between that and the fact of the girl in front of her. Feeling puckish, Beatrice has them do three poses that evening in short order; Beatrice works fast and bold, smudges the charcoal with her fingers. The poses she chooses are expansive, playful, and Ava keeps grinning at her as they work. She’s broken into a light sweat by the time they’re done. 

“They’re rougher,” Ava observes, drawing her robe closed and looking at the drawings. “But I like them. They feel alive.”

“I wanted to try something a bit different.”

“It’s a good direction,” Ava says. She looks at Beatrice, smiling, like she wants to say more.

“Let me get your check,” Beatrice says, and Ava disappears to get changed.

“See you Friday?” Ava asks casually as she leaves.

“Sure,” Beatrice says without a thought.

After Ava leaves, Beatrice collapses on the couch, which smells like the perfume Ava wears that smells a bit like the ocean mixed with the scent of lemons.

Ava is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful girls. She’s a wild, sparkling thing. It’s that wildness that Beatrice hungers after, the tonic for her own stillness.

She’s running up against a wall, however. More specifically, she’s going to run out of money. She can ask her parents for more, but they will want to know why. And she cannot explain them it’s to pay a girl she would very much like to sleep with to stand naked in her living room twice a week.

Sighing, she picks up her phone, and sends a text:

_I’m afraid we might have to postpone Friay for a bit. I’m going to run out of money._

And then as if to minimize her sadness at having to say so, she adds: _LOL sorry_


	7. UNDERTONES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nature of their arrangement changes.

**AVA**

Ava lying in bed, looking at the drawing Beatrice gave her. She’s in a state of heightened need and yes, arousal, she’s sure of it now. She doesn’t know what that means in any broader sense. It simply is what it is.

She stares at Beatrice’s text for a long time before answering.

She had debated refusing her check as she was leaving tonight. And now that she’s staring at the possibility of having to stop their sessions simply because Beatrice is running out of money, she feels she should have. It’s too much to put in the drip drip drip of text messaging.

 _Call me,_ she writes back.

A moment later, her phone rings.

“Hey.”

“Are you all right?” Beatrice asks.

“Um, yeah, I don’t know. Listen, I think we should keep Friday on the books. I know you’re running out of money, but it’s okay. I…” She takes a deep breath. “I kind of feel wrong taking your money, actually.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Beatrice begins to protest.

“No, it’s not.” Ava says it more forcefully than she means to. She breathes, tries to start over. “I don’t know if you understand that I’m getting a lot out of this.”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pay you for your time,” Beatrice says gently.

Frustrated, Ava tries again. “I don’t want to stop the sessions, Beatrice. I need them. It’s… it’s not about the money.”

Beatrice is silent for a moment. “I see. What is it, exactly, that you’re getting out of them?”

Beatrice’s voice is so soft, so cautious, and the lilt of her accent so delicate. Ava aches. She doesn’t question it. “It’s just… the way you look at me. The way you _see_ me. I feel like I exist. It feels important, what we’re doing. Don’t you feel that?”

Beatrice takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. Ava closes her eyes and hangs onto the sound of it. “It feels terribly important,” she admits. “It _is_ terribly important. As are you.”

It makes Ava’s insides clench to hear her say it. “Why?” she whispers.

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“You’ve become my muse, I’m afraid.”

Ava shivers at the words. “What does that mean?” Her hand rests on her abdomen, just above the powerful ache that’s suddenly pleading for attention.

“It means you’ve lit fires of inspiration. You’ve moved something that demands a response from me, one that I have no choice but to apply the entirety of my soul and my skill to.”

“Why? What do you see when you look at me?” She wants to understand, wants to know what lies behind those eyes as they travel over her naked body. But also, she just wants to hear her voice, soft and musical, caressing her ear.

“I see a totality,” Beatrice says. “I see beauty, yes, of course. Forms that comport perfectly with the architecture of the human body, the divine feminine. Balances that exist as if engineered by genius. The symmetry of your lips, the taper of your calves down to your ankles, the curve of your hips as balanced by the curve of your breast.”

Ava can barely breathe. She lies there thinking of how Beatrice looks at her when she draws, and the words flood into her mind and imbue that memory with meaning. She slides her hand down into her underwear and holds it there. Her breathing stops.

Beatrice continues. “But I also see a humanity married to those forms. A mind that races, a soul that seeks constantly, an open heart, a vulnerable spirit, a person who wants to be understood…”

“And seen,” Ava sighs.

“Yes, and seen. You teased me that I enjoy looking at you, and that’s true. But that’s also far too facile an explanation for how I respond to you. You excite something in me, a longing to understand, and each time we sit down I’m trying to decode you, do you see? I’m looking for the truth in the bend of your knees, or the tilt of your head, or the curl of your spine.”

It doesn’t make sense to Ava that hearing her talk like this would have this effect, but Ava is moving herself against the hand she has cupped between her thighs. “Okay,” she says breathlessly.

“I want to unpuzzle you, bit by bit, until I have plumbed the depths of you.”

“Oh,” Ava says.

Or rather, moans.

A silence follows, in which she hears nothing but her own thick breathing as she rubs herself and thinks about Beatrice’s words, Beatrice’s voice, Beatrice’s eyes looking at her and plumbing her depths.

“Ava?” Beatrice asks very softly after a moment.

“Hm?”

“Are you… doing what I think you are?”

Ava stops. Should she confess? She hadn’t intended to be so obvious. “Um. Probably?”

Beatrice coughs lightly. “I see.”

“Is… is that bad?”

Quiet laughter. “Just unexpected. I didn’t realize you were…”

“I don’t know what I am,” Ava says quickly. “I don’t know what it means that I feel this way. I don’t normally go for girls and I don’t know what this is or what I want from you beyond what this already is. Maybe nothing. But I know that whatever it is now, I need it.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, Beatrice. Is that okay? I can stop. We can totally hang up and pretend this never happened.”

“No,” Beatrice says after a moment. “Would you like me to continue?”

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice’s system is in shock. Whatever she may have expected or hoped for, it wasn’t this. Not Ava, moaning softly on the other end of the phone. “We probably shouldn’t have sex,” she says before she says anything more.

“That’s okay. I don’t know that I want that anyway. I just want you keep talking. Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you see. I liked hearing it. Please?”

This is entirely new territory. Beatrice has had a few relationships, most of them quite tame in terms of sexual proclivities. Most ended because the other girls complained that they found her too emotionally unavailable. Kinks exist mostly as an abstraction. It takes a moment for the surprise to wear off before she figures out that she’s aroused. “What would you like to know?”

Ava’s breathing is heavy. “Are you turned on when you draw me?”

“Sort of. It’s something different, or more than that. You’re a powerful center of gravity. I fall into it. I forget the technical because I so much want to honor who you are. I let myself trust my hand so that my eye can take pleasure in you, the subtle expressions of your face, the texture of your skin, everything about you that’s beautiful. Everything about you that wants my attention.”

“Oh God,” Ava sighs.

“When I’m working with you, I’m in an elevated state, where all of my senses are turned up, and that includes my sexual senses. So yes, in one sense, I am sexually aroused when I work with you, but also emotionally, intellectually, visually… All of my sensitivities become greater because I’m trying to take all of you in. Trying to imprint you on my nervous system so that I can reproduce it honestly and naturally.I’m trying to produce a different kind of art than what I’ve done before, and you’ve become the key to that. So yes, I need you. I need you perhaps even more than you need me.”

“You need me?” Ava’s breath is so shaky, she can barely speak. Beatrice doesn’t dare imagine what’s happening on the other end of this call. The very idea of it has made her wetter than she wants to admit.

“I do.”

Another quiet moan. “Please say it again?”

“I need you, Ava. I need you.” Beatrice pauses, listening to her whimpering desperately. She cannot help what she pictures listening to it; the thoughts light little fires all over her skin. “Does it give you pleasure to hear that?”

“Yes.”

Beatrice closes her eyes. “I need you, Ava. You’re opening me, simply by being you. The more you open yourself, the more I’ll open too.”

“Oh, God, I’m open right now…”

Beatrice bites her lip. “Can you open more?”

“Will you too?”

“Yes.”

A silence filled with more of Ava’s breathing follows. Beatrice rearranges herself to lie down on the couch, undoes her trousers, and slips a hand down to press her fingers against her throbbing clitoris. An involuntary gasp slips out.

“Are you with me now?” Ava whispers.

“Yes.”

“Will you let me hear you?”

“I tend to be a bit quiet, but yes.” She doesn’t need to know anything more than the fact that Ava is getting off on the thought of what they do together, that she’s sharing that with her, that she wants her to share too. She doesn’t mind if what Ava wants from it isn’t precisely the same as what she wants.

“Do you really need me?” Ava asks her in a very small voice.

“Yes… God, Ava…” Beatrice can’t quite remember the last time she touched herself but this is decidedly more thrilling.

The talking stops, unravels into panting, gentle sighing, moaning. A moment of simple pleasure shared, separately, in the dark.

Ava is first to come, announcing herself with a sweetly agonized, “Oh, God, Beatrice, I’m– _oh!_ ”

The sound of her abandon pushes Beatrice over the edge a moment later.

They lay together, separated by distance but not by the feelings of the moment. “I hope you don’t regret that,” Beatrice says softly.

“Never,” Ava says. “This is different for me, and I don’t know what it means, but I can’t imagine wanting to take it back. I hope you don’t either.”

Beatrice has always known who and what she was, but she understands that Ava is not that way and may find this confusing. She can’t risk their creative situation by trying to turn this surprise phone sex into something more. “Know that I don’t expect anything because of this. I won’t lay a hand on you when you come here unless you initiate,” Beatrice promises. “This can exist in its own separate space if that’s easier for you.”

“Okay. I might need that.” Ava says. She yawns. “I’ll see you Friday?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t wait.”


	8. BLENDING

**AVA**

Ava doesn’t decide to have any feelings about the unexpected turn of her phone call with Beatrice until she sees Vince again.

“So you offered to continue without payment? Why?”

“Because I’m getting something I need from it. She makes me feel…” Ava doesn’t have the words to explain it to her own satisfaction. “…valuable. Important. Special. You don’t understand how fucking good she is, Vince. She’s going to be famous, I swear to God. And the way she looks at me when she works… the things she sees… ”

He absorbs this without comment.

“And then… I don’t know. I realized after she gave me that drawing that I’m actually like, turned on by it.”

Smiling, he motions for her to continue.

“Anyway, when we had that conversation when I told her she didn’t have to pay me anymore, something happened.”

“Something happened?”

“I guess it was like, phone sex? I don’t know. She didn’t actually say anything dirty, you know?”

“Then in what sense was it phone sex?”

“She was just talking about what it was like to draw me, what she feels when she works with me, and how I was her muse, and… you don’t understand, it was like poetry. And it was all pointed at _me_. At _me!_ ”

“Is that so crazy?”

“Yes!”

“And you were turned on sexually by it?”

Ava flushes, in part because she’s embarrassed, but also because thinking about it is getting her hot under the collar again. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Vince says, suppressing a smile, “there’s a lot to unpack here. Where would you like to start?”

“I don’t know! Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?”

“I suggest we start with, what if anything does this change about your perception of yourself or your identity?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I can’t quite picture having sex with her or anything. I like it exactly like it is now. Does it make me bisexual? I have no clue how any of that works.”

“Maybe. Maybe this is something else entirely.”

“Maybe I’m not bisexual, I’m just Beasexual,” Ava chortles, cracking herself up entirely too much. It’s so dumb and funny she wishes she could share it with Beatrice.

“Have you ever been attracted to women before?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

They toss this ball around for a while. Vince asks a lot of questions Ava can’t answer.

“How do you think this will change the dynamic of your sessions, now that they’re no longer paid?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you _want_ it to change them?”

Ava thinks about this. The truth is, she’s still not sure she wants anything to change about them. Except for one thing. “I hope we can have more of them.”

“You’ve removed a professional barrier,” he points out. “You’re just giving each other something now. You’ve made it personal.”

“Maybe it always was.” Art is so muddy, she thinks, so easy to slip into places where it has no business. “You know, when we, um, finished on the phone, she said she wouldn’t touch me unless I initiated, and that we could keep what happened on the phone in its own space if that was easier.”

“Interesting. What do you think about that?”

Their relationship seems to be spawning a new dynamic every time she turns around. Their phone call is one. Their texts are another – Beatrice is wry, relaxed, funny. Their sessions are yet a third – a quietly intense sharing of themselves. And each is discrete from the others. Their dynamic is a honeycomb of disparate cells, each one feeding their needs in an entirely different way. When she tries to explain this to Vince, it doesn’t quite come out of her mouth the way it fits together in her mind. “I don’t know. I told her right when it started to get um, sexy, that I didn’t know what I wanted and that I’ve never been into girls before. Maybe she’s just trying to respect my space. We’re both juggling different sides of ourselves, I guess.”

But her curious mind is not satisfied. She needs to compare the intimacy of their sessions with what she felt last night and see them side by side again.

On the bus home, she texts Beatrice.

_You know, if money’s not an issue anymore, we don’t have to wait until Friday._

Beatrice’s response is almost instantaneous.

_Can you come tonight?_

Ava is supposed to meet a couple of people for a study group. She decides to blow it off. _Yeah, I can come over tonight._

_Great. 8 ok?_

_Yeah that’s fine. Can I ask you something?_

_Of course._

_Did you mean what you said last night at the end of our call? About letting that exist in its own space?_

_Of course. I don’t say things I don’t mean. I don’t intend to try to start anything tonight if that’s what you’re concerned about._

_Sorry. I’m used to fuckboys who say that and then try to start something anyway._

_Well fortunately I’m not any kind of boy, fuck or otherwise._

There she is, Ava thinks. Funny Beatrice. The Beatrice she likes just as much as the intense artist Beatrice of their sessions, or the sensual Beatrice of their phone call last night.

_LOL ok. I’m a little confused and I need room to process last night. Thank you for giving me the space to do that._

_Are you sure you still want to come over?_

_Wild horses couldn’t drag me away._

**BEATRICE**

Professor Salvius is not the first person that Beatrice has heard talk about the “flow state”; that place in which the musician or artist has moved past thinking about their technique and entirely trusts in it to express that which lies within them. She reflects that this is really what she has been trying to achieve with Ava.

When Ava arrives, Beatrice invites her in. It’s all too easy to picture her face in a state of bliss, so she looks elsewhere as she says, “Good to see you. Thank you for coming.”

Ava sets down her backpack. Her eyes search Beatrice’s face, though for what, Beatrice has no idea.

“Ava,” Beatrice says, “I just feel I owe it to you to tell you something.”

“What’s that?” Concern in her tone. Searching, searching eyes.

“I’m gay.” She rarely says that aloud. But she feels Ava has a right to know that what’s happening between them has a different weight for her.

Ava blinks a couple of times, seems to assimilate the information, and then says, “Okay. I’m going to go get changed.” No indication of what, if anything, the information means to her.

The ritual of her disappearing to the bathroom and coming back in the robe comes with its own thrill of anticipation. Ava shuffles into the living room and stands in front of the couch. “So?” She looks at Beatrice’s eyes, holds her there with the steady weight of her gaze. “How do you want me?”

Beatrice flushes. This time, it’s not an inadvertent double entendre. Beatrice can see in her look, Ava says it knowing full well how it will be received. “On your back, please.”

Ava slips out of her robe and lays it on the coffee table. Beatrice allows herself to feel a pang of desire before she wills herself to stop looking at Ava through that lens. She waits as Ava lays down on her back on the couch, looking up at her. “What now?”

“Just choose a comfortable position.”

Ava places a hand on her stomach, and lets one leg hang over the side of the sofa, foot on the floor. Beatrice sets herself on the armrest at Ava’s feet. It’s a different angle. As Ava sees her settle into this position, she shifts down abit, and places one foot on the armrest next to Beatrice.

Beatrice knows that she promised to leave last night in the space of last night, so she props her sketchbook on her knees and tries to look through her architect’s lens; she tries to see shapes, not Ava, a girl she desires, laying in front her, legs slightly parted like a tentative invitation.

But shapes and forms are not the answer either.

“Is this all right?” Ava asks. What is it in her voice? A challenge?

“It’s fine.”

Beatrice closes her eyes for a moment and lets her longing consume her. And then she draws. She lets her eyes indulge in every inch of Ava, strokes and massages the shape of her body into being on the page. She lets herself want. And she barely looks at the drawing.

Ava’s eyes are locked on her, but it’s quiet save for the scratch of the pencil, a light violin concerto playing low in the background, and the gentle tapping of a rain that has just begun to come in, spitting against the window. The subtle scent of blueberries hangs in the air between them. And in Ava’s eyes, Beatrice sees so much; arousal, curiosity, confusion, aching, gratitude. She can hardly imagine how the girl contains it all.

Is this flow state? This feeling of being lit from within, focusing only on the object of one’s passion, art happening spontaneously from one’s hands?

When they break, Ava looks at the drawing and says only, “I love it,” but with such conviction that Beatrice shivers inside.

She asks Ava to keep her robe on, and the second drawing is a close portrait. They sit a couple of feet apart on the couch, and Beatrice loses herself in the beauty of her face. The gentle smirk on her lips, the grace of her eyebrows, the hunger and conflict in her eyes. It’s painful to sit so near, to gaze on her mouth with such care and not be able to kiss it. But she doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean, and she said she wasn’t going to initiate anything.

When Ava puts her clothes on again, the goodbye is mildly awkward. They barely speak. As ever, they don’t touch. Beatrice presses the portrait into her hands. “Thank you,” Ava mumbles, and hurries out into the rain.


	9. SHARPENING

**AVA**

These drawings are the first time anyone has expressed their desire to Ava in a way that makes her want to cry. These drawings aren’t about what Beatrice wants from Ava, but simply a display of everything that she finds beautiful about her. And she is willing to reach deep into her to get them.

Ava’s hair is damp as she sits on the bus home and taps out a message to Beatrice:

_How did you know you were gay?_

_It came in the envelope with my Hogwarts letter. :)_

_Come on. Did you just always know or did it hit you one day? Or?_

_I always knew, I just didn’t know what I knew. When I discovered gay as a concept at about twelve, I realized that it accurately described me._

_But sometimes people figure it out later, right?_

_Yes. There’s no gay handbook if that’s what you’re asking._

Ava refrains from laughing out loud on the bus like a weirdo. _That explains why I couldn’t find it on Amazon._

A few moments go by during which Ava can see Beatrice is typing.

_There’s no right or wrong way to express yourself. You need not apply a label to yourself if you don’t want one. I rarely do it myself. You are Ava, and that transcends all. Everything else is a sub-bullet._

Yes, but who is Ava? She hasn’t figured that out yet. The session didn’t feel very different from before; it excited her in ways that she doesn’t know what to do with. What happened on the phone didn’t feel wrong. But it still wasn’t real. And she’s still not clear on whether she wants it to be.

_I’m not sure if knowing you were gay would have changed anything for me but are you ok with this as it is? Like if it doesn’t ever get to be anything else?_

_It’s meaningful as it is. I’ll let you know if it becomes a problem. But people can relate to one another in lots of different ways, or ways that blur and defy category._

No kidding, Ava thinks.

JC calls her later to see if she wants to try some of his new chocolate Thai, but she declines. She already has enough blueberry stuff to last her for a bit. If it’s sex he’s after, she’s not interested. And if he just wants company, she finds herself even less interested in that at the moment. She can watch Adult Swim all by herself.

She finds herself sitting on the couch, googling travel destinations. She thinks again about going somewhere else, remaking herself. Paris looks good. There’s a bookstore where you can live for free if you work in the store and you’re a writer. She’s not really a writer, but maybe she could be. Her story is less of an epic and more of a series of episodes, but they’re as worth telling as anyone else’s. Who decided Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories were more important than those female novelists of the day? Who said that the “damned mob of scribbling women” weren’t real literature worthy of study?

She gets sidetracked looking at swimming hotels in Bora Bora, but cannot get the question out of her mind. In a fit of pique, she looks up female authors of the 1850s and orders herself a bunch of books by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe. That’ll show ‘em.Who “them” is, she’s not sure.

She looks up the bookstore again. There’s an email address on the site if you want to become a “Tumbleweed,” one of the writers who lives and works there. She fires off a missive asking for direction on how to apply for this opportunity, then sits on the couch, staring at something she’s not really watching.

Diego comes in from work. “The Great British Bake Off? Seriously?”

“Shut up, it’s soothing.”

He holds up a sixer of Heineken. “Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

They crack the beers and she hands Diego the remote, since she’s not really paying attention anyway. He puts on some superhero show and settles back into the couch. Her laptop is still sitting open on the table.

“Tumbleweeds? What’s that?”

“You get to go live for free in a bookstore in Paris. You gotta work there a couple of hours a day and you gotta read and write every day.”

“Do you write?”

“Not yet. But maybe I could.”

“What would you write about?”

Ava doesn’t have a plan yet. “I don’t know. What do people write about? Love. Loneliness. Family. Friendships.”

“Sex?”

“Sure, I guess.” She inspects him for a moment. They’re not close, but she’s always found him easy enough to talk to. “Hey Diego, have you ever been with a dude?”

Diego almost spits his beer. “Why?”

“I’m just wondering.”

His grin is lazy as he admit, “Yeah, sort of, not ‘all the way’ or whatever, but one time.”

“Was it fun?”

“I was pretty drunk, but… I think so?”

“Was it weird?”

“In one way, yeah it was totally weird. And then in another, it wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… yeah it was a dude, and so, like, my mind couldn’t totally get itself around that? But then in another way…” He hesitates. Diego is careful about not being too vulgar around Ava. She can tell this hesitation is him trying to find a delicate way to put what he wants to say.

“Just go ahead. Be crude if you have to.”

He coughs. “Well, you know. A guy’s mouth doesn’t feel that different from a girl’s mouth when it’s wrapped around your dick.” He chugs his beer and adds a mumbled, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Why do you want to know anyway? You thinking about girls?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. One girl in particular. I’m not sure.”

“Hm.”

They drink the rest of their beers and watch some guy in a onesie beat the crap out of people.

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice and Ava fall into a pattern quickly. Their sessions become almost every other day. Sometimes they squeeze short ones in in the afternoons between classes. Sometimes they have ones in the evenings that go on for hours. Beatrice is so consumed with hunger for Ava that she can barely speak by the time she leaves.

But then there’s always the text conversation afterwards, funny and honest, where Beatrice gets to interact with Ava’s squirrelly, curious mind. It’s also where she learns the most about Ava’s life: how she was orphaned very young, bounced around in the foster system, is attending Felton on a partial scholarship and has cobbled her tuition together out of grants, stipends and a few loans when she had no other choice.

And there’s the phone calls. Those aren’t after every session, but they’re often enough. Most of the time, Beatrice is so sexually frustrated by the time Ava leaves that she takes care of herself whether she speaks to Ava or not. But sometimes, she gets the text. It usually comes in late, when she’s already lying in bed: _Can you call me please._

She always does.

Sometimes, Beatrice talks. Never about what she wants to do to Ava, only about what she sees in her, or how Ava’s presence is shaping her work, or how fascinated she was that evening with a particular contour of Ava’s body.Sometimes, she doesn’t need to talk. Sometimes Ava just wants to hear her enjoying herself.

“You’re so quiet,” Ava moans one night. “Let me hear you.”

“I’m sorry,” Beatrice whispers, “I’m just normally quiet.”

“It’s because you hold back. Don’t.”

As Beatrice continues to stroke herself, she sighs a little. “I can’t just–”

“What are you thinking about?”

Beatrice stops. “What?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking about. Right now.”

“Ava…”

“Please.” Her voice is soft, pleading.

“You first.”

Ava goes silent for a moment. Her breathing shakes. “I just think of you looking at me, how your eyes move all over me. I think about how it makes me feel. I think about the things you show me about myself. And I think about you. Your face.”

“That’s all?”

“I… I can’t picture more. But I want to.”

This is new. Ava has never asked to hear about what Beatrice would do in bed, and Beatrice has not volunteered, as that doesn’t seem to be the source of whatever it is that Ava feels.

“When we talk like this,” Beatrice says after a moment, “I think about you. I think about the many ways I’ve seen your naked form, and extrapolate that to a very clear image of what it would be like to make love to you.”

Ava whimpers. “Do you want that?”

“Do _you_?”

“Help me see it. Tell me what you think about.”

Beatrice hesitates.

“Please.”

“Think of my face, Ava.”

“Okay.”

“Now think of my mouth. Can you picture it?”

“Yeah.”

“Imagine that it kisses every part of you that you’ve shown me, from the curve of your neck to the backs of your knees, your wrists, stomach, hips, inner thighs. Your mouth, your collarbones, the tendons in your neck. Your breasts. All of you.”

“Would you do that?”

“Yes.” Beatrice is instantly in flames imagining it.

“Do you like the way girls taste?”

“Very much.” Beatrice starts to stroke herself again.

“Do you think about tasting me?”

Beatrice lets out a quiet little groan. “Yes.”

“I like it when you make sounds,” Ava breathes. She’s breathing hard. “I like to know you’re enjoying it.”

“Too much,” Beatrice pants. “Tell me what you’re thinking about now,” she says again.

“You. I’m wondering if you’re wet.”

“I am.”

“So am I,” Ava whispers. “Tell me more.”

This too much for Beatrice, and her fingers move faster. “Can you picture my hands?”

“Yes. I look at them when you work.”

“Visualize them. Their strength, their dexterity, their sensitivity. The length of my fingers, the softness of my fingertips.”

Ava moans in answer.

Beatrice feels a spike of pleasure at the sound. “Imagine them doing what your own hands are doing now.”

Ava curses softly under her breath.

Beatrice returns an inarticulate sound of pleasure. Words go away. Her heartbeat picks up. She comes, thinking about touching Ava.

How long can she continue doing this? How can she continue acting as if these moments are something discrete from their sessions, from their texts? It’s all one Ava, and Beatrice wants all of her.

Her hunger distracts her in classes. She can hardly think of anything except the next time she’s going to see Ava. Salvius notes with interest that her work has become looser and more alive. But how long can she continue to play with this fire before she ends up burning something or someone?


	10. COMPOSITION

**AVA**

“Vince, I’m in the trash bin.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what this thing is, with Beatrice. It’s been a few weeks now, maybe almost a month? I don’t know. It’s all fuzzy.”

“Tell me what’s going on. Give me the bullet points.”

“I’m over there all the time.”

“Every day?”

“No. But close. And we have these sessions, and they’re always so intense, and the drawings are so beautiful. I used to laugh when people would say ‘oh, I feel so seen’ but I get it now.”

“But?”

“I’m like, addicted to it. To the way I feel in these sessions. And the way I feel when I see myself through her eyes. And then I leave all wound up. Like, horny.”

“So? Do you want to have sex with her?”

“I didn’t think I did but now I think maybe I do? I don’t know. We keep having these really hot phone calls after our sessions.”

“So, this is primarily an erotic experience for you.”

“Yes, but it’s not only that. When we text in between sessions it’s something else. We just talk. She’s smart and funny, and I like her.”

“Maybe you’re falling for her. Is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” Ava sprawls halfway off the couch and kicks at the beanbag chair. “And I don’t know if I wanna get all involved and stuff when I’m thinking about going away.”

“Going away where?”

“Paris. Shakespeare and Company.It’s a famous bookstore where writers go and live there for free as long as they work in the store.”

“When did you start writing?”

“I haven’t.”

“So you’re going to run away to Paris and just become a writer?”

“I said I’m thinking about it.”

“That’s convenient,” Vince observes. “Then you don’t have to deal with your feelings for Beatrice.”

“Dammit,” Ava grumbles, “that is not what I’m paying you for, man.”

“It’s exactly what you’re paying me for.”

As usual, Ava’s feelings are more complicated that that. He’s not wrong; part of her surely does want to run away from a situation that’s confusing her. But part of her wants to stay, wants to throw herself into being Beatrice’s everything; muse, model, lover, friend. The sense of purpose she finds in that thought is compelling. But so is the question, “And what about when she gets tired of you?”

There’s still that voice in her head, the one that says even if this thing is happening between them right now, that she’s not really good enough for someone like Beatrice. That Beatrice will eventually realize that. And that Ava will be back smoking JC’s weed and watching adult cartoons and being numb and lost.

At least if she goes to Paris, she’ll be in Paris.

Riding home from therapy, she gets Beatrice’s text:

_Still good for 8?_

_Yeah. Want me to bring anything?_

_Just yourself._

_OK cool_

Ava wonders something:

_Have you ever been to Paris?_

_Yes. It’s beautiful. I’m not sure any other city comes close._

_How many places have you been?_

_A lot. Europe makes it sort of easy to get around._

_OK but which ones?_

_Lisbon, Vienna, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Gstaad…_

_Where the fuck is Gstaad?_

_Switzerland. Ski country._

Beatrice skis. Of course she skis. Money, talent, intelligence. Beauty. Ava thinks again of the way Beatrice looks at her when they’re working, the way her eyes shine. Her delicate lips when she smiles at Ava. She’s beautiful. Ava has not allowed herself to articulate this simple thought before.

 _God,_ she thinks, _I’m in trouble._

**BEATRICE**

If asked, Beatrice will not admit that her sleep is suffering a bit. She will not acknowledge that her sessions with Ava have taken an outsize importance in her life. That knowing every inch of her body more intimately than a lover has claimed a portion of her energy that it should have no right to.

The weariness of late-night sessions, late-night phone calls, late nights obsessing about her work, her desires, her future, it all brings a caffeine habit. The work under Salvius’s eye is different now: it’s less careful, more frenetic. She blows into class barely on time, tired and rumpled – a far cry from her neat, punctual self. “I’m glad you’re trying things, and your work has improved in ways that it needs to,” Salvius says, but there’s a look of concern in her eyes. “Don’t suffer too much for your art. Chasing greatness is not a journey down a paved road. It’s a tightrope act.”

“Sorry?”

“Flirt with disaster. Just don’t marry it. And for the love of Christ, don’t develop a substance problem.”

Developing a substance problem hadn’t even occurred to Beatrice as an option. Perhaps that would be easier than whatever this self inflicted torment is with Ava. She fires off a text: _Can you bring some of that blueberry stuff tonight?_

_Really?_

_I never say things I don’t mean._

_Yeah sure._

Ava arrives in good spirits, and pulls a little bag from her purse which contains a slender little joint. “Now or later?”

“Now,” Beatrice decides.

They sit down on the couch. Ava looks as if she’s waiting for this to be a prank as she lights the joint and pulls in. The smell of burning paper hits Beatrice first, but then a moment later, the skunky scent that she’s familiar with from it leaking out from under dorm room doors. But then, floating on top of that, blueberries. It’s curiously pleasant. “It’s almost like incense,” she remarks.

Ava releases a cloud of it into the air between them, coughs a little, and nods in agreement. “Now,” she says, seeming to relish the opportunity to teach Beatrice something, “the thing about this is, your first time, you might not even feel anything. But we should take it easy anyway because some people do, and we don’t want to overdo it and have you get knocked on your… yeah. So just take one, two at the most.” She passes it to Beatrice, who inspects it for a moment.

“So, I just…?”

“You close your lips around it, suck in a little, and then open your mouth and breathe all the way in. You’ll probably cough, but that’s good, because it means you’re more likely to actually get something out of it.”

Beatrice follows Ava’s instructions to the best of her ability. She’s not smoked anything before, and the sensation of it filling her lungs is interesting for about two seconds before it becomes uncomfortable and she coughs it all out. Emphatically. She coughs for several seconds until Ava feels moved to get up and go to the kitchen and come back with a glass of water. Beatrice gratefully drinks and lets the cool of it soothe the weird burning in her throat. “I think that’ll do for me right now,” she says, once she finally stops coughing. “I feel like someone’s sanding my lungs.”

Ava is looking at her with amusement, and entirely too much affection. She stubs the joint out against the side of her shoe and puts it back into its little baggie. “I’m gonna go get changed.”

While Ava is gone, Beatrice leans back into the couch, waiting to see if she feels anything. There might be a sort of lightness creeping in at the edges of her consciousness but she can’t be sure. When she opens her eyes, Ava has returned, her robe fastened without much commitment, and she’s looking at Beatrice softly. “Hm,” is all she says.

Beatrice gets up. “Interesting.”

“So?” Ava asks. “What are we going to do today?”

“Chef’s whim,” Beatrice says wantonly. “Whatever you like.”

“You never do my back. Do my back,” Ava decides.

She stretches out on her stomach on the couch. Beatrice positions herself at the foot of the couch and begins to work. Vaguely, she remembers Salvius warning her to flirt with disaster but not marry it.She begins to call forth the shape of Ava lying on her stomach, working down from the neck, to the shoulder blades, down her spine. The slender waist, the little indentations at the base of her spine. Buttocks, thighs, the backs of her knees with the faint blue veins showing through the skin. Down to the arches in her feet.

She wants to touch all of it. But she promised that was Ava’s move to make.

As the gentle effects of her blueberry flavored experiment increase, Beatrice is dismayed to find that her body is responding to Ava’s too strongly. Her touch on the page becomes heavier, her shadows darker, as if she’s trying to press her lust into the paper instead of releasing it on Ava.

It occurs to her to glance at the wall clock. It’s been forty minutes. “Shit, Ava. We should take a break.”

Ava stirs, turns over, looks at Beatrice with a sleepy look that does nothing to quell the longing that is driving her past distraction. She’s slow and casual about finding her robe again. She slides into it and comes over to where Beatrice sits with her sketchbook.

“Why so morose?” Ava asks.

“I’m not morose.”

“Let me see.”

Ava peers at the sketchbook, fascinated. “So dark?”

“Different mood,” Beatrice says.

Ava looks at her, suddenly serious. “Um, listen, I wanna tell you something.”

Beatrice feels foggy, but she doesn’t like the way this is starting. “What’s that?”

“I think I’m leaving at the end of this semester.”

“Leaving? Leaving for where?”

“Paris.”

“So that’s why you were asking about it.”

“Yeah. I just… this has been really … intense and meaningful for me, and in fact it’s kind of why I’m going. This whole thing, our sessions and just knowing you at all. It’s made me want to be more.”

Beatrice knows it’s not a rational reaction, but she’s frustrated. “How can you leave me when I’ve only just begun to break down the walls in my work?”

“Beatrice… we don’t owe each other anything. You can find another model, you know?”

“Yes, but she won’t be you!”

Beatrice gets up and tosses the sketchbook onto the couch. She storms over to the window and stands there fuming for a moment while Ava lingers behind her, not knowing what to say.

“Beatrice… listen…” And then Ava lays a hand on her shoulder.

_Ava lays a hand on her shoulder._

Beatrice spins around, knowing she should calm down, but she can’t. “You touched me. Why did you touch me?”

Ava stares back at her. Yes, stares. Eyes like hot coals, stares. Her voice is barely a whisper. “You know why.”


	11. DYNAMICS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a very spicy meat-a-ball

**AVA**

Beatrice closes her eyes, as if marshalling strength. “I need you to say it.”

“I don’t want to leave without knowing what it’s like to touch you. I’m tired of not touching you.” Ava’s thumb strokes the spot where Beatrice’s neck meets her shoulder, involuntarily.

It’s like striking a match.

It takes a split-second for them to end up against the wall, Ava grabbing desperately for Beatrice and Beatrice pushing her against it with pent-up intensity. The kisses are hot, hungry, urgent. But Beatrice’s mouth is so soft. Her lips are soft. Her tongue is soft. When Ava slides her hands up the back of her sweater, her skin is soft.When Beatrice yanks her robe open and presses against her again, her sweater is soft. Ava wants to drown. She’s overwhelmed. She wants. The sounds they make are exactly the ones they’ve made so many times on the phone and it almost feels like they’ve done this before, except they haven’t. The electricity in the air betrays that.

“Stay,” Beatrice is mumbling between kisses. “Don’t go.”

Their hands are grasping, trying to touch each other everywhere at once; faces, shoulders, waists. Beatrice’s hand reaches between her legs for a moment before hurrying up to her breast again. It’s nowhere near enough.

“Please,” Ava sighs, and kisses and nips at Beatrice’s lower lip. “Please.”

Beatrice pulls her away from the wall, but their kisses are too hot, their bodies too eager to feel each other, and they don’t make it to the couch. They end up in a sloppy descent onto the living room floor, Ava on her back, Beatrice on top of her, trying to bury themselves in each other.Ava pushes her hands down the back of Beatrice’s jeans, grabbing at her ass, grinding into her.

“Please,” Ava whispers again.

“Please what?” Beatrice pants, and Ava feels her hands, her beautiful hands, her long, strong fingers, grasping at her, whatever she can get, whatever she can reach; the flesh of a thigh, a shoulder, a breast.

“I want you,” Ava whimpers. “Please, I want you to fuck me. Please?” She manages to push her hands up Beatrice’s sweater and then slide it over her head. Where it ends up is anyone’s guess. More skin, yes, more skin. More Beatrice.

Beatrice’s teeth sink into her earlobe and it sends a stab of hot pleasure down to her core. “I want you to stay, Ava.”

“Beatrice, please. Show me all the things you think about in the dark.” She reaches around and unhooks Beatrice’s bra.

Beatrice moans, and then makes her messy way down the front of Ava’s body, devouring her like she’d been starving. Every place her mouth touches is made hot and sacred on Ava’s skin, and every time her teeth sink in, Ava sobs with pleasure and Beatrice cries with relief. Ava wants this. She has wanted this since the first time she saw the way Beatrice looked at her. There’s no point resisting that truth now. When Beatrice’s teeth bite her shoulder, when her tongue makes a quick, rough caress up her breast before sucking on a hard nipple, when she kisses each individual rib, sucks on her navel, she does it with the confidence of someone who has stared at her body for hours upon hours and thought about this exact trip a hundred times.

She slides down, biting along Ava’s hip bone, sucking at the place on her thigh where the goosebumps are raising, and pushes her thighs apart to lick the insides of them. Ava lifts her head, looks down at her, locks with Beatrice’s serious gaze. “You’re sure?”

Ava nods vigorously. And then she loses command of her brain as Beatrice’s mouth digs into her. She instantly decides she doesn’t care what it means that she wants Beatrice. She just wants her. She wants her tongue. She wants her hot breath on wet flesh. She wants to be kissed and sucked and bent and teased exactly the way Beatrice is doing right now. It feels like she’s melting and Beatrice intends to lick every last drop. Her fingers scrabble at Beatrice’s hair. She wants to hold onto her.

She’s angry with herself for waiting, for being afraid.

Beatrice is, even in her urgency, as thorough with her tongue as she ever is with anything; anxious to know her, eager to plumb her depths. She can’t help rutting against Beatrice’s mouth.The knot of pleasure is tightening. “Beatrice…”

Beatrice pauses for a moment and Ava whines a little.

Beatrice props herself up on one elbow, and looks at Ava, scrutinizing her for a moment. Slowly, she moves up her body again, kisses her mouth, more gently this time. “Ava,” she whispers.

Ava slides her tongue into Beatrice’s mouth, runs it across her lips. Tastes what she realizes with amusement is herself. She smirks at Beatrice. “You’re right.”

“About?”

“Girls do taste good.”

Beatrice laughs, kisses her again. A moment later, Ava feels Beatrice’s fingers gently slide into her, and she gasps. “Oh, hi.”

“Is this good? Is it what you like?”

“I kind of like it all. But I like looking at your face.”

That much is true. Anything that brings them closer, she wants to feel it. They move against each other, looking at each other, kissing softly. Beatrice is reflecting so much back in this moment; their coming together is more than a relief, more than a delight. Beatrice’s eyes tell Ava that she is where she wants to be; lying on top of Ava, kissing her deeply, sliding into her, pulling out, pushing in deeper. Ava’s imagination pales beside the reality of this beautiful girl, her delicious passionate kisses, and her deep, firm, gentle touch.

Ava says it out loud. “You’re so beautiful.”

Beatrice kisses her. “Do you think so?”

“Yes. You are. If I were an artist I’d pay you ridiculous amounts of money to stand still so I could draw you.”

“Hush,” Beatrice says.

Face to face, they lie in the middle of the living room rug, and Beatrice fucks her so sweetly, Ava can only wraps her arms around Beatrice’s waist and murmur, “Yes,” over and over until she turns into sunlight and she comes.

Beatrice quickly slides out of her pants and lies back down on Ava, and they hold each other, weeping quiet tears of relief. She’s beautiful. Beatrice is beautiful.

**BEATRICE**

She wanted this. She wanted to see Ava lost in orgasmic bliss and now she has, and it was more beautiful than she even expected. Ava’s look during sex has a deep aching to it, that she wants this so much that it almost hurts.

But now she wants Ava to stay, too. She resists the impulse to scold herself for her greed. She just wishes that she would touch the bottom of her longing at some point.

“I wouldn’t mind moving this to the bed,” Beatrice says after a bit. “I’d like to do that again, but a bit slower. I’m afraid I was a bit rushed the first time.” Frenzied is more accurate, probably.

Ava cackles. “You’re even a perfectionist about sex?”

“I’m especially a perfectionist about sex.”

They move to the bed. Beatrice lies down, and Ava perches herself at the foot of the bed. Beatrice looks quizzically at her.

“I’m just looking,” Ava says. “You spent so much time looking at me, but I never got to look at you until now. So I’m looking.”

She’s so serious, Beatrice thinks, so sincere in her desire to simply _know_. So Beatrice lies still and lets Ava’s gaze travel slowly over her. After a few minutes, Ava asks her to turn over. She wants to see the other side. Beatrice closes her eyes and feels Ava’s fingers tracing over her skin. They stop at a small scar near her waist. “What’s this?”

“Horseback riding accident. Fell off when the horse took a bad jump, tore myself on the rail.”

She hears Ava draw a sharp breath. “Ouch. Figures you wouldn’t have any normal people scars.”

“Normal people scars?”

“Yeah. Like that little one on my calf? I got it climbing over a chain link fence.”

“What were you doing climbing over a chain link fence?”

“Sneaking out of the orphanage, duh.”

Ava’s hands spend several minutes exploring. When Beatrice turns over again, Ava’s looking at her, misty-eyed. “Why the hell am I a muse for you? You’re this… extraordinary, beautiful, talented, amazing person and I’m… me.”

This breaks Beatrice’s heart and makes her angry at the same time. “Stop it,” she says sternly. “You’re more than you give yourself credit for. You’re not the first pretty girl that’s come in to model in Salvius’s class.”

“But you’ll get bored of me,” Ava says, and stubbornly continues to speak as tears trickle out. “Maybe it would have happened faster without the sex, I don’t know. At some point you’d have gotten what you needed from me and then you wouldn’t want me anymore.”

Beatrice wipes the tears from Ava’s cheeks. “Where is this coming from?”

“Knowing you at all,” Ava says. “You gave me a taste of what it feels like to have a purpose, to be doing something that matters. But my purpose can’t just be your purpose. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Is this why Paris?”

Ava nods. “Yeah. Because I need to set a course for myself. I need a purpose that’s mine, just mine. And… I’m not confused about what I feel for you anymore, you know. I don’t want to use the big, heavy words now, but I love being around you, and talking to you, and I love your amazing, amazing art. And I love your beautiful face, and your beautiful body, and I really love how you made love to me with your eyes, and with your pencils, and then with your hands, and your mouth. And I want to make love to you, too.”

This feels too much like goodbye. Beatrice knows it’s going to hurt when she goes. “You don’t have to–”

“Shut up, I want to. And I’m gonna probably be so-so at it, but I’m a quick study.” And those eyes, when Ava gives Beatrice those eyes, so soft, so achingly vulnerable, it’s too much for her to resist. She kisses Ava like it’s their first, with tenderness and meaning.

They lay together and Ava spends her time kissing Beatrice softly, running soft hands all over her skin, carefully tasting her way down her neck, across her chest. “Tell me what you like?”

With soft, wordless touches, Beatrice directs Ava to where she wants her, and Ava responds and tries, and learns. She wants to know Beatrice’s body that way. Her innocent glee when she discovers something that Beatrice particularly likes is painfully endearing. She settles down with her cheek resting on Beatrice’s stomach.

“I love your body so much,” she sighs, kissing the space just above Beatrice’s navel. “I wish I didn’t waste so much time being confused about this. I wish I just let myself feel it.”

Beatrice runs her fingers through Ava’s hair. “We have it now. And for as long as you stay.”

Ava looks up. “Are you mad I’m going?”

Beatrice hates herself for her ugly first reaction. In her own way, her feelings for Ava have also been a muddy mess, and the different states of interaction as necessary for her as they were for Ava. “You need to do what’s best for you.”

Ava smiles and kisses her stomach again. “So? We have a few more weeks. Help me learn how to make love to you so you won’t forget me while I’m gone.”

Beatrice blinks back a few tears.

Ava is telling the truth. She is a quick study.


	12. FRAME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end, children. I have tried to bring you an honest love story. I hope that this ending satisfies your hearts.

**AVA**

The bookstore emails her back. As her good fortune would have it, several of their current residents will be leaving in a few weeks and there will be an opening if she wants it.

The remaining weeks slip through her fingers. She does the bare minimum to get by in her classes, because she doesn’t want to waste her money, but anything beyond the minimum is reserved for Beatrice. They spend every spare moment together; getting high, making love, creating art together. There’s a bittersweetness to it all, because it’s coming to an end.

But it also feels right. This could be a real adult relationship at some point, but Ava needs to sort herself out first. She needs to become something, someone whole and independent of Beatrice. She needs to become someone who belongs with a girl like Beatrice. Right now, she doesn’t see herself that way, even if Beatrice does.

JC happens upon them having lunch outdoors in the Felton commons and thankfully, he behaves himself. But when he runs into Ava later on, he offers a fist bump. “Bro, she _is_ hot.”

It’s about the deepest response she could hope for from him, but it’s heartwearming in its way. He’s not particularly jealous or threatened. He’s happy for her because she landed a hot girl. There’s something weirdly sweet about that.

She has to write something to show a sample of her writing for the bookshop. She spends a couple days sweating over a poem, something she hasn’t really tried to do since elementary school. She’s pleased enough with the results that she sends it:

_Blooming_

_Was the name of the muse–_

_Or Thalia, in Greek_

_Until they changed it. Or forgot it._

_She was one of nine, and someone’s mother._

_Or one of four, or three, or ten._

_The stories change._

_All of them,_

_Just mothers of children of destiny_

_Mothers whose identities are lost to the legends of their sons_

_It doesn’t matter which one bore which great man_

_I was never the one who inspired dance_

_Even simple steps are too much to ask._

_But I bloomed once,_

_Under the watchful eye of a girl_

_Who showed me her longing_

_And in showing me that precious, imperfect ache_

_Showed me myself_

_Thalia, mother of who?_

_It doesn’t matter._

_I bloomed on a page, in charcoal black_

_In a girl’s eyes, dark and sparkling_

_In subtle shades of gray_

_But I am no-one’s mother_

_No children of greatness issue from between my legs_

_Just longing for a girl_

_Who taught me to bloom_

_And now waits for me to pluck myself._

Her hopes hang on this. She can always choose another path, but she feels certain that this is the right one. The thought of it feeds her. Beatrice practices French with her. “Get me a glass of orange juice” is the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to her.

She writes her Comp Lit final paper, a blistering comparison of Nathaniel Hawthorne against his female contemporaries, breaking down exactly why he was full of shit, with an eloquence that even surprises herself.

When the final acceptance comes, Beatrice takes her to dinner to celebrate it. They get high and go to a fancy Italian restaurant and giggle at everything on the menu, particularly the zbaglione.When they go back to Beatrice’s place, Ava wants to go to bed right away. The better she gets at making Beatrice come, the more she enjoys doing it. But Beatrice’s mood has shifted to a more pensive one, and she wants to draw Ava first.

“Why now?” Ava says.

“Because. You’re happy. I want to capture it.”

Ava sashays into the bedroom. “Okay, draw me in here,” she calls over her shoulder.

Beatrice follows her. By the time she gets there, Ava is almost entirely out of her clothes. By the time Beatrice has her sketchook and pencils in hand, Ava is stretched out on her back, hands clasped behind her head. Beatrice settles next to her feet and begins to draw.

What she brings forth is the most exciting drawing Ava has seen from her yet. Relaxed, sensuous, confident, happy. Luminous from within. “You see it too,” she whispers. “You know it’s right.”

Beatrice nods. “This is the most beautiful you’ve been, you know.”

She lays the sketchbook aside, and Ava sits up, and helps her out of her clothes. She doesn’t know how many more times she’ll get to do this before she goes. She spends a few long minutes after she’s undressed Beatrice to simply take all of her in: the flat stomach, the slim hips, the small breasts tipped with dusty pink, the long neck, the spattering of freckles on her nose. The handful of scars she’s discovered. All of it excites her. She cannot imagine feeling any other way about it.

She will miss all of Beatrice; her voice, her hands, her words, the quiet scratching of her pencil, her dark, soulful eyes. But to be enough for Beatrice, she has to be enough for herself, and to be enough for herself, she has to leave.

They make love until they cry, and then cry until they make love again. It hurts, but it’s the pain of growth. Ava knows it. It’s a good hurt.

**BEATRICE**

Beatrice chooses a dozen or so works to turn in for her final project for Salvius’s class. Some, she refines before turning in. Some, she embellishes with watercolor, with ink, with textures; sometimes, the accurate reproduction of the way something makes one feel stands in opposition to the slavish recreation of its details. But in these pieces, she has found a different way. There is slavish detail, devotion, dedication to the beauty of the subject, but there’s her own heartbeat too. Her blood, sweat, sex and tears have found their way onto these pages, and although it’s a strange feeling to show them precisely because of that, she also knows that she has touched some kind of next level.

Salvius approves. “So you fell in love,” she observes, looking at the collection all neatly matted in the studio.

“I suppose I didn’t ever call it that,” Beatrice admits.

“Yes, well. Plain old horny doesn’t get you work like this.” Does Salvius have a twinkle in her eye as she says this?

Beatrice blushes faintly, but doesn’t argue the point.

“Now that you’ve turned in your final project, will you please get some sleep?”

“I’m afraid I can’t promise that.”

“Oh?”

“She leaves for Paris next week, for an undetermined amount of time.”

“Ah. So, very little sleeping until then.”

“Most likely.”

They exchange a barely perceptible smirk.

“Did she ruin your life?”

“Only a little. I expect I’ll be heartbroken for a bit.”

“Well, then. Perhaps you’ll consider my summer program to keep your mind and heart occupied.”

Beatrice looks at her with surprise. “Really?” Salvius’s summer program was only offered to a very small handful of students and put those students on a track to opportunities not afforded an average Pratchett graduate.

“Of course. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. What were you planning to do, mope around London for the summer?”

Beatrice realizes that she hasn’t been able to see past Ava’s departure. Moping around London would afford her the opportunity to go to Paris, but maybe that would be defeating the point of all this. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“It’s next week.”

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware.”

“Well? Do you want it or not?”

“I do!”

“Good. Now go home and shower. You smell like coffee, cannabis and blueberries.”

Chastened, Beatrice goes home.

Beatrice accompanies Ava to the airport. They’ve already done their crying at home. They embrace, and Beatrice kisses her gently. “Be safe. Be well. Enjoy yourself.”

“Next time you see me,” Ava warns, “I’ll be different.”

“You’ll still be you. Just a you with more experiences.”

They haven’t promised each other anything. It wouldn’t be wise. They’re both young, and a lot can happen in a short time, as evidenced by how quickly their own relationship became intense. But Ava promises not to go completely dark.

She’s good on her word. Every now and then, she sends a photo from Montmartre or the sun coming up on Place St. Michel.And on occasion, she sends a book recommendation (she reads so much now!) or a few lines of poetry. A few times over the summer, they have lengthy text exchanges. Ava is excited to hear about Beatrice’s work in Salvius’s program, and Beatrice sends her a few photos of her work in progress.

 _We broke each other open,_ Ava says one night in a text. _That means we’ll always mean something to each other, even if it isn’t the same as what we meant to each other before._

Beatrice keeps this truth next to her heart.

Ava starts reading art books, and they occasionally enage on theory. Ava gets very excited about the influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh. She’s devouring almost a book a day, she says. She sleeps in a tiny bunk, surrounded by shelves and shelves of them. She sends a picture of herself with a guitar in hand.

Beatrice texts back simply: _!!!!!_

_Don’t get excited, I’m really bad at it._

_Too late. I’m excited._

Beatrice is in her own head. The summer program stretches her in surprising ways. Her new work is suffused with the ache she feels at missing Ava. Even an ocean away, she still inspires.

As the summer winds down, Beatrice and the other three students from the summer program get invited to dinner at Salvius’s home, with her wife – the Dean, apparently. Beatrice has seen the Dean around but she seemed terribly stern so Beatrice tried to make sure she never had a reason to meet with her. She finds her much warmer in this environment. She thinks about the oddities of chemistry and how and why people who seem different fit together.

When Ava announces she’s going to stay through the fall semester, Beatrice gives herself permission to date people. They’re half-hearted attempts. She doesn’t like Tinder very much. She ends up making one decent friend, though, so it’s not a total waste.

It’s November when Ava texts her:

_Guess what._

_What?_

_I finished a book._

_You’ve finished a lot of books._

_No, I finished *my* book._

_Congratulations!! What does that mean? What happens now?_

_A lot of things. I have to do some polishing and stuff, but then I try to sell it._

_What’s it called?_

_Precious Imperfections_

_What is it about?_

_It’s about us._

_So, a horror story, then? ;)_

_A love story, dummy._

Beatrice’s chest fills up with feeling at this, as if Ava had never even left. A love story. The words they had never said. _Will you be coming back soon, then?_

_No, I think I want to stay and spend Christmas in Paris._

And then, the dots dance for a moment, Ava writing something more. Beatrice waits. And then it comes:

_Do you want to join me?_

_For Christmas?_

_Yeah. In Paris. What do you think?_

_YES_

_HUZZAH_

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. But she knows for certain two things:

Their story is a love story.

And it isn’t over.

_"The human binocular and flickering vision, coupled with the precious imperfection of the human hand is where art lives - there are no shortcuts."_

_– Dean Taylor Drewyer_


End file.
